


I Can Do Anything

by protego



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-02-01 03:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21359665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protego/pseuds/protego
Summary: "All of the strength she had before disappears in a second. The bottom falls out of her world. The edges of her vision go dark, and she thinks she’s going to faint, but he’s still holding her up. Her stomach sways, and she’s speaking without thinking, without knowing what she’s saying, reduced to animal instincts. “Please don’t hurt them — Please — Oh, God —”“Actually,” he says, calmly. “I go by Chuck now.”"AU ending for 15x04. Chuck decides to keep his Number One Fan around as an editor.
Relationships: Becky Rosen/Chuck Shurley
Comments: 40
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how long this is going to be, or where exactly it's going. A friend suggested this idea to me, and I decided to write it out! Hope you enjoy the ride.

“Oh, Becky. I can do anything —”

Chuck steps closer to her, and there’s no warmth in his gaze at all. He’s still smiling — he’s been smiling since she finished reading his so-called ending — but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He raises his hand, and she knows what’s going to happen even though she doesn’t understand how or why. He’s going to snap his fingers and make her disappear, just like he did to Rod and the kids. _Oh God. The kids._ Her thoughts are free-falling. Images. Rod Jr. on his fifth birthday, blowing out the candles on his cake, Bryan cheering when he scored a goal against his dad, the boys tucked up in bed while she reads them Harry Potter. Her _kids._ She didn’t even get to see them before he — 

Chuck pauses. He lowers his hand and studies her, and Becky wants to shrink away, to cover herself somehow, because it feels like he’s staring right through her. This thing that’s called itself Chuck, but it has to be a demon or a shapeshifter or some other kind of monster. She swallows, and doesn’t look away from his weird gaze. She feels naked in front of him, completely exposed.

“You know what?” he says, quietly. “Every good writer needs an editor.”

She opens her mouth, and she’s surprised she can still speak when she croaks, “What?”  
  
He nods, but he doesn’t even seem to hear her. “Yeah. It’s like your dream, right? Editing your favorite author’s work.”

Her breath is coming in gasps, and her legs are shaking, and she’s terrified she’s going to fall over. It’s like the shock of what happened is catching up to her, and she presses her hands against her stomach and stares at him, pleading with her whole body. “Chuck — Please —” she whispers. “Bring them back.” She realises too late that she called him Chuck, even though she knows this isn’t Chuck. But she doesn’t know what else to call him, because he’s wearing Chuck’s face. 

He sighs loudly.

“I already _ told _ you,” he says. “They’re not dead. Just… Cool it, okay? They’d be a distraction. We wanna make this the best Supernatural book ever, don’t we?”

“No,” Becky says in a steely voice, and she feels a little braver. She’s killed a demon. She’s faced monsters before. Her back straightens and she looks right into his eyes. “_I_ want my family back. I don’t want to be your editor, Chuck.” Her voice doesn’t shake.

There’s a pause, and she watches his face change. She’s looking right at him this time, so she sees it happen. What little light there was in his gaze just drains away, and his creepy smile fades and it’s like he’s shutting a part of himself off. “I made you, Becky Rosen,” he says, and his voice is so different. It’s deep and rough and cold. “You think it matters what _ you _ want? I’m _God._ There’s _only_ what I want. Understand? Now, c’mon —”

He waves his hand and she feels her legs give way, and her body slides forwards, her feet dragging along the floor. And he walks around the desk and sits on her chair, in front of her laptop, at her desk, and she follows him like a dog on a leash, her body moving by itself. She struggles and squirms, but it’s like an invisible hand is gripping her, pulling her along, and she stands behind Chuck, held fast. She tries to open her mouth, but whatever he’s doing to hold her still is keeping her lips shut, pressing her teeth together, so all she can do is make an infuriated, terrified, noise behind her closed lips.

“We’re gonna be a great team, Becky,” Chuck says, staring at the screen, where the cursor is blinking patiently. 

She groans against her teeth, a muttered sound of protest, and struggles against the invisible grip, but Chuck doesn’t turn around. He starts to type, and Becky stares into the living room, where Rod was standing when he vanished. _ He’s not dead, he’s not dead — Chuck said he’s not dead — _ But this isn’t Chuck. And if Rod’s not dead, then where is he? She closes her eyes and wants to scream, to fall onto her knees and just scream, but she can’t move. And she can’t give this creep the satisfaction. Whatever it is. This monster that looks like Chuck. That took her husband and her kids and her life with two snaps of his fingers.

She realises the typing has stopped, and opens her eyes. Chuck’s staring at the screen, and he waves one hand, and she feels her lips unseal, and she gasps frantically, her mind racing. Should she yell? He might kill her. He might honestly, really, _kill_ her. He might kill whoever comes to try to help her. Or he could send her away, like he sent Rod and Junior and Bryan away. But, before she can say anything, he speaks.

“What’s another word for pain?” he asks.

Becky doesn’t wanna read what he’s writing. She doesn’t want to hear his voice. She closes her eyes and presses her lips together and doesn’t make a sound. The chair creaks and she can feel Chuck looking at her with her empty eyes. He snaps his fingers, and she wants to flinch, but she can’t move. But he’s just snapping to get her attention, because he does it again, and he says her name in a sing-song voice. “Beck-_y._ C’mon. Play your part. Give me another word for pain.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Y’know,” Chuck says, conversationally. “Your family aren’t dead. But things can change real fast.”

All of the strength she had before disappears in a second. The bottom falls out of her world. The edges of her vision go dark, and she thinks she’s going to faint, but he’s still holding her up. Her stomach sways, and she’s speaking without thinking, without knowing what she’s saying, reduced to animal instincts. “Please don’t hurt them — Please — Oh, God —”

“Actually,” he says, calmly. “I go by Chuck now.”

Her eyes burn with tears, and she sobs helplessly, still standing there with her arms pinned to her sides like a wooden doll. She can’t move, she can’t breathe, she can’t think. Her chest aches, and she stares at him through the film of tears, and she blinks and feels them fall down her cheeks, sticky and hot. And he just looks at her silently, sitting in her chair with his elbows resting on her desk, his expression totally hollow. No anger, no pity, just patience. Like a father waiting for a child to finish having a tantrum.

“Becky,” he says, and his voice is so soft and gentle and it sounds so much like the Chuck she used to know that it’s somehow worse. She gasps raggedly and blinks at him, quivering as much as she can, automatically. He smiles a little, a close-lipped smile. “Another word for pain. Come on now.”

She opens her mouth, and whispers, her voice is so quiet that it’s more like a breath. “Agony,” she says.

He doesn’t say anything. He just spins in her chair and turns back to her laptop and starts typing, way too loudly. She feels like she lost something, some of her dignity — the dignity she spent years earning, the self-respect her therapist taught her, the self-confidence she found for herself through Rod and her kids and her fulfilling life. He’s taken it. So easily. She just stands there and sobs silently.

And Chuck doesn’t look at her once.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left comments and kudos for the last chapter! It's so appreciated!

The first night is the hardest. 

It’s 3am, and she’s still standing there, held up by whatever powers he’s using, and he’s still typing. She’s so tired, and her head nods and she starts awake to the sound of his incessant typing. It’s like he’s never gonna stop. Not ’til he’s got his perfect book, his freaking Magnum Opus.

Becky knows she’s in shock. She hasn’t processed what he’s done, what’s happening. It’s just _happening_. He snapped his fingers and she watched her husband disappear right in front of her. He snapped his fingers again and her kids vanished. She knows, distantly, that she’s in shock, that her brain isn’t reacting normally, but she’s too tired to care. She's _so_ tired. It feels like she hasn’t slept in years.

“Chuck —” she says, quietly.

“Mmm?” he says through closed lips, not looking away from the screen. She stares at the back of his head. _ When did his hair go grey? _ She wants to just fall asleep there, to drift away. It hurts too much to be awake, to be conscious. But she can’t. It’d be like falling asleep in a room with a wild animal. And falling asleep feels like she’s admitting he’s won, like she’s giving in to whatever sick plan this is.

“I’m really tired.” She barely whispers it, because everything in her is screaming at her not to say anything. _ Don’t make him angry. Think about the kids. _ How did that happen so fast? She went from yelling at him, to trying to keep him calm. To not angering him. When did she start thinking of Chuck as one of his monsters? This is like a dream. It can’t be happening. But it is.

He takes off his glasses and turns to look at her, frowning, like he’s annoyed at the interruption. “What?”

“I need to sleep,” she says, her voice shaking a little. “I can’t help you if I’m exhausted, can I?”

That’s the only way this is going to work. She _ knows _ him. He might be some demon now, some monster wearing Chuck’s body, but he wants her to be his editor. So, she has to appeal to his ego. Whatever she’s dealing with, she knows he’s arrogant. So, she looks at him, even though her body is aching from standing up for so long, and her brain feels like cotton wool. He looks back with that weird blank stare. And he goes back to typing.

“You can sleep on the couch,” he says, and he gestures with one hand casually.

Becky blinks, and she’s standing beside the couch, across the room. He moved her. He just waved his hand and moved her. Her whole body shakes, and she can’t make it stop. _ If I don’t lie down, I’m gonna faint_. So, she lets herself sit down on the couch with a thud, and curls her knees up to her chest, and lies on her side. She’s so painfully aware of him, still sitting at her desk, and she glances over at him with wide eyes. He’s illuminated by the laptop’s light, throwing up shadows, making him look inhuman. He’s got a weird half-smile on his face. It makes him look crazy. He doesn’t look at her.

_ I could run_, she thinks. She’s closer to the door here. She could run and get onto the street before he could stop her. And she _ wants _ to. God, she wants to get up and run and run and scream for help. _ I could — _

But her eyes roll back into her head and her eyelids close, and she feels her body getting heavier and heavier, and her thoughts get incoherent and distant. Maybe it’s her body wanting to give her a break from the trauma, or just exhaustion, but she falls asleep on the couch, with the sound of Chuck’s typing going on and on.

* * *

Becky wakes up slowly, and then all at once, and for a second, she can’t remember. _ Why am I on the couch? What —? _ But then it all comes back to her. Rod, the kids. Chuck. She sits up too fast, and her head spins. She sways a little, but turns to look at the desk, and he’s still there. He looks like he hasn’t moved since last night. He’s not writing, he’s just staring at the screen with his ugly sneering smile, and she feels sick watching him.

He _ looks _ like Chuck, like the sweet guy who couldn’t string a sentence together and took her out on dates to the movies and let her ramble about his books. But there’s nothing behind his eyes, even though he’s smiling to himself. He hasn’t noticed she’s woken up.

And it hits her. _ If I don’t go now, I might not get another chance_. She remembers the beginnings of the Supernatural books, when the kill-’em-off-at-the-beginning characters would try to outrun a monster in the woods, and get caught at the last second, and feels a terrifying, dizzying, sense of foreboding. But she has to try. She can’t stay here.

All at once, Becky bolts up from the couch and runs to the door, and it feels like a nightmare, like one of those awful dreams where you’re running and you can feel something right behind you, and it’s gonna get you if you turn around. She can’t hear anything — not the sound of her desk chair being pushed back, or him slowly walking after her like a horror movie villain — and she thinks, wildly, that maybe he’s going to let her go. Maybe he’s tired of her, or he doesn’t care, or something —

She reaches the door to the porch and grabs the handle desperately, her hands shaking, her whole body buzzing with frantic energy. He still doesn’t come after her. She’s too afraid to look back to see what he’s doing, if he’s watching her, and she yanks open the door and staggers outside onto the porch. She’s barely thinking, just reacting.

“Help me — Someone —” She doesn’t sound like herself. Her voice is too high, strangled and choked, and she runs down the front steps of her house, staring out onto the road. It’s still early, and the sun is barely up, but she can see her neighbour’s houses, their curtains drawn, their cars still in their driveways. Someone’s going to wake up. Someone’s got to help her. Maybe Chuck will just leave if she gets someone’s attention.

But Becky blinks, and she’s back in her living room. It happens in an instant, so fast that she can’t understand. She was on the street, outside, but now she’s back in her living room, and she spins around, her heart racing, her lungs burning, her thoughts pinwheeling. “What — What happened — What did —”

Chuck’s sitting on the couch, holding a mug of coffee. It’s Rod’s mug, and it says Best Dad in the World! on the side in bright blue letters. Junior bought it for him on Father’s Day. Chuck smiles at her pleasantly, and it’s so _ wrong_, so completely opposite to how she feels, to what she’s thinking, that she doesn’t know what to do. She just stares at him, shaking her head, as the truth sinks in slowly. This isn’t _ like _ a nightmare. It _ is _ a nightmare.

“We’re not finished, Becky,” he says, and he sounds like a father scolding his child for trying to leave the table early at dinner. He doesn’t look mad, just sort of amused. Like the sight of her standing there slightly hunched over, gasping for breath, almost in tears, is funny to him. But he also has a weird look too, almost _fond_? Her dad gave her that look, when she got an A on an exam or passed her driving test. Becky stares at him, shaking.

“Try again,” Chuck says, gesturing to the door. “Go on. You won’t get further than the street. Oh. And no one can hear you. So —” He shrugs, and takes a sip from Rod’s mug, and maybe it’s the sight of his lips on her husband’s mug, or the sight of her freaking ex from ten years ago sitting on her couch, or just powerless, pointless, fury, but Becky snaps. She looks around frantically for something to throw, something to _ use_, and she picks up a bobble-head of Dean and throws it at Chuck without thinking, not caring about the consequences. She just has to do _ something_, get this out of her. And if he’s mad at her, maybe he’ll send her to the same place he sent Rod and the kids, and she’ll be with her family. But Chuck just waves his hand and the bobble-head sails harmlessly past him and lands on the couch.

“Careful,” he says, calmly. “They’re collectable.”

Becky lets out a strangled, frustrated, sob, and she wants to throw something else, but she knows it’s pointless. She can’t run. He’ll just bring her back. And there’s something about his cold smile that tells her he _ wants _ her to run again. That it would be entertaining to him. She doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. And she’s so weak from hunger and emotionally drained that she couldn’t face running again, only to be dragged back here. She whimpers, and doesn’t move, and Chuck looks disappointed.

“Breakfast’s in the kitchen,” he says, and he stands up and walks back over to her laptop. “Don’t try anything stupid, Becky.” He sits down at her desk, and doesn’t look at her.

She swallows thickly, and walks into her kitchen. It looks exactly the same as it did yesterday morning, when she made breakfast for the family. Her legs buckle, but she manages to stay standing up, and she stares at the table. There’s a bowl of porridge, with a silver spoon beside it, and Becky blinks. It looks so _ normal_, like something Rod would do for her. She sits down in the chair and stares at it. She’s starving, but the thought of eating something Chuck made for her turns her stomach. And she stares at the spoon and realises. _ It’s silver_. Okay, sure, it’s just _ plated _ silver, but that counts, right? If he’s a monster, he’d react to it. And she blinks slowly, and her gaze drags across the table and lands on the salt shaker.

_ What would Sam and Dean do? _ They’d find out what they were dealing with. They’d look at the lore. She can’t look at any lore, but she can work out what she’s dealing with. So, Becky stands up and walks over to the cutlery drawer, and pulls out a silver knife, and slips it up her sleeve. “Okay, Becky,” she whispers to herself. “You got one shot. Be smart.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the ridiculously long hiatus! I got stuck with the direction of this story, but I'm going to try to make it more regular from here on out, now that I've got more time on my hands. Thank you to everyone who left Kudos! It means the world.

The knife feels cold against her wrist as she walks back into the room, the flat of the blade resting against her skin. It feels like it’s so bulky, like he’ll be able to see as soon as he looks at her. Becky tugs her sleeve down, in an awkward, self-conscious gesture that she used to do when she was a teenager, but hasn’t done for years. That’s what he’s done to her, this monster that looks like Chuck. He’s already made her so much less. She grips the end of her sleeve in her fingers, and holds it tight.

“You’ve eaten already?” he asks, not looking away from the screen. He’s not typing anymore, he’s just staring. From where she’s standing, she can’t see what’s on the screen. All she can see is the reflection in his glasses, of a white, blank, page. He’s chewing his cheek, and frowning.

“Uh… Yeah,” Becky says. She has no idea how to talk to him. She just stands there, clutching her sleeve. After a moment, Chuck looks up from the screen. His glasses flash with white at the movement. For a horrible, dizzying, second, Becky thinks he knows.  _ He knows I’ve got a knife and he’s going to kill me. He’s going to take it out of my sleeve and stab me. He’s going to — _

But he doesn’t do anything. He just stares at her, and then smiles. It’s that same empty smile, the one that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Good.”

That’s all he says. 

It doesn’t feel good. She feels like she’s going to throw up, but she knows she only has one shot. She has to do this. So she says, “D’you… Have anything for me to read?” Somehow, she smiles. “If we’re doing this, I might as well help, right?”

Chuck takes off his glasses. He leans back in his chair. Becky sees his throat muscles tense, his skin stretch over his trachea. Is that how she’s going to do it? Slash his throat like a killer in a horror movie? She tries to imagine it — sliding the kitchen knife across his skin, opening his flesh, blood gushing out onto his shirt and onto her keyboard. Would it even do anything? She doesn’t know what he is. What if he can heal? What if he’s a demon, and he just leaves the meatsuit, and the real Chuck drowns in his own blood? What if she stabs him? Right in the neck? Would that be quicker? If it was her, would she want some monster wearing her body like that? Is the real Chuck, the prophet, stuck inside his own head?

“Yeah,” he says, suddenly. “I do. Come here.” He waves his hand, and suddenly, she’s standing there, right next to the desk. She stumbles, and grabs the desk for support, because she thinks she’s going to fall. There’s a quiet clinking sound as the bottom of the knife touches the desk, but Chuck’s expression doesn’t change. He just looks at her with that same sickening smile.  _ Didn’t he hear that? Maybe he didn’t. He must have just not heard it. It’s okay. If he heard it, he would have done something. _

She straightens up, and Chuck nods at his screen. “Go ahead,” he says, not moving from his seat. “Tell me what you think. That’s why you’re here, right?” He looks up at her and meets her gaze, and she knows she has to do it. She has to pull the knife out and do something, or she might not get another chance.

It happens at once. She slides the knife down out of her sleeve and into her hand, and she barely catches it. Chuck’s neck is craned back, where he’s looking up at her, and she raises the knife and plunges it into his neck. She feels the give of skin and soft flesh, and it reminds her of when she used to stab her pimples with a compass — the feeling of skin breaking under something sharp. She watches the knife go into his neck, right in, up to the handle. He’s still staring at her. He’s still smiling.

Becky staggers backwards, her eyes burning with tears, her own throat full of phlegm or vomit or spit. Chuck — this  _ thing, _ this nightmarish, evil, creature — sits up in the chair. The handle of her silver plated steak knife is sticking out of his throat, and it should look ridiculous, but it looks horrible — it just looks so  _ horrible. _ She collapses onto her knees, because she knows it hasn’t done anything. There’s no smoke or electric flashes or anything. It’s nothing like when Sam and Dean stab a monster in the books. It’s like she stabbed a lump of clay. It’s like she stabbed a trowel into dirt.

Chuck reaches for the handle, and slides it out. There’s no blood. There’s no blood. Becky is shaking uncontrollably, and she wants to scream, but she can’t make a sound. All she can do is lie there on the carpet, and watch. He puts the knife down, and she stares at the gaping, bloodless, gap in his neck. It closes like a mouth, like an eye, flesh moving towards flesh, and there’s no sign of what just happened. There’s nothing, except the knife in his hand.  _ Oh God — Oh God — _

And she knows that thinking that is pointless, because he was telling the truth. This is God. This isn’t a demon or a shapeshifter or any kind of monster Sam and Dean have fought. Chuck isn’t a prophet. He’s God. And he’s going to kill her.

He puts the knife down on the desk. “Oh Becky,” he says, softly. “Why’d you do that, huh? Now look at you. You’re terrified.”

He crouches in front of her, resting his elbows on his knees, smiling at her like a camp counsellor. She’s trembling all over, and she doesn’t know what to say or do. Does he want her to answer? Her vision blurs, and she thinks she’s going to throw up. She swallows thickly, and feels something slimy slide back down her throat.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m sorry — I’m just so scared —”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know you are.” She feels his warm hand in her hair, his fingertips brushing against her scalp, and she closes her eyes. If it’s going to happen, she doesn’t want to see it. She just wants to hear the snap of his fingers and then… whatever happens next. Maybe he’ll send her to wherever he’s got her family. Maybe he lied, and he’s killed them.

“But I told you, didn’t I?” he says. “I told you not to do anything stupid.”

This is it. He’s just monologuing, like the villains from his books. He’s just stalling.

“Becky, open your eyes.”

She doesn’t want to. She keeps staring into the blackness behind her closed eyes, and sobs to herself. But then she feels something sharp and cold brush against her eyelid, barely scratching her, and pull away. Her eyes open quickly, and the knife is floating right there, in front of her, at eye level, pointed right at her. Nothing’s holding it — it’s just hanging in midair, like it’s being held up by fishing wire. And all she can think is,  _ That doesn’t look real. _ She tries to pull back, but she can’t move, and it’s just like before, when he was dragging her across the room and holding her up and making her stay still.

“Please don’t —” she sobs. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows she’s hysterical, but she can’t stop herself. “Don’t hurt me — I’m sorry — I’ll edit — I’ll do whatever you want —”

“Becky,” Chuck says. She can’t look away from the knife, which is so close to her face that it’s blurred, but she hears his voice right next to her. “Shut. Up.”

She slams her mouth shut, and hyperventilates through her nose, her lungs quivering, her whole body trembling.  _ Like a mouse, _ she thinks, wildly.  _ Like when I was a kid, and our cat brought in a mouse but didn’t kill it straight away — _

“Now.” His voice is so calm, so controlled, so pleasant, that she wants to laugh feverishly. But the knife is right there, so sharp and thin, facing her. Hanging there. “An editor doesn’t need two eyes.” He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and she can feel him watching her, staring at her chest rising and falling in sheer panic, her sweat and tear-stained face shining, her eyes wide and terrified. And she knows, without even looking at him, that he’s enjoying every second of this. She can feel it in the air, his enjoyment. It feels seedy, disgusting, embarrassing. Like he’s getting off on this. And it’s stupid, thinking about it like that, because there’s a knife right there, inches from blinding her, and he’s  _ God, _ and she’s so scared that she can barely think at all.

“Remember that,” he says, quietly. The knife vanishes in a second, and the feeling of being held still disappears too, and Becky collapses onto the floor in a heap, crying.

She doesn’t look up when Chuck stands up. He claps loudly, and she jumps at the sound. But she can’t lift her head off the carpet. He speaks as if she’s not lying there, traumatised.

“Alright, that’s enough drama for today,” he says. “I’m gonna go check out your place. You don’t mind, right? I mean, since I’m staying here, I wanna see more than just this room. If you try to leave, I’ll know. And I’ll remove your tongue.” She believes him. She believes him without question.

There’s no sound at all, but she knows he’s gone, because the air in the room feels lighter. It feels like she can breathe again, through the tears. She doesn’t get up off the floor, or move, for a very, very, long time.


	4. Chapter 4

Hunger eventually drives her up, like a dumb animal. She doesn’t feel like a human anymore. She feels like a body, a body that needs feeding, and she staggers to the kitchen. The bowl of porridge is still sitting on the table, with the silver spoon next to it, and it looks plastic, covered with a shiny sheen. Becky feels sick just looking at it, and she turns away to stare at the cupboard, where they keep cereal. Her heart aches just looking at it.

She walks over to it and opens the door. They’re all there — the family’s cereal boxes. Rod’s Cheerios, the kids’ Froot Loops and Coco Pops, her Corn Flakes. She stares at the boxes, all lined up neatly, and bursts into tears again. It’s so stupid, so ordinary, that it breaks something inside her. Her family. Her  _ children. _ She grits her teeth and screams shrilly, not caring if Chuck hears. No, screw that. She  _ wants _ him to hear, so he’ll get sick of her and send her to wherever her family is. But there’s no sound, nothing.

She imagines him upstairs, walking through her hallway, peering into her son’s rooms, looking at her family’s photos on the walls, and she presses her palms onto the counter and bows her head, hating him and  _ hating _ him with every fibre of herself. She knows that hatred is pointless, but it’s all she has, because he took everything else. How has everything changed in less than a day? How has she lost everything in twenty-four hours?

Her stomach aches with hunger pangs, so she straightens up, wiping her face with her sleeve. Her face is sticky with tears, and her eyes hurt from crying so much in such a short amount of time. She looks at the cereal boxes, and all she wants is a bowl of Corn Flakes. A totally ordinary bowl of cereal and milk. Somehow, she feels like it’ll make everything feel better, for a little while.

So, she reaches up for the box, and puts it onto the counter. Slowly, mechanically, holding her feelings at arm’s length, she walks over to the cupboard where they keep the bowls, and takes down a dark blue bowl from their matching set. She and Rod chose them when they first moved in here.  _ No. Don’t think about it. Don’t you dare — _

She gathers everything she needs for a completely normal breakfast — a mug of tea, a bowl of Corn Flakes. As she pours the milk onto her cereal, she watches the white liquid splash, and puts the carton of milk down again. There. Now she’s made herself a totally ordinary breakfast, as if an unkillable monster isn’t prowling upstairs, as if this is just another late morning, after Rod’s gone to work and the kids have been dropped off at school.

Becky sits down with a thud at the kitchen table, and eats her Corn Flakes. If she closes her eyes, and lets the soggy cereal sit on her tongue, it’s almost like none of this is happening. She can’t pretend for too long, but for now, it’s just enough.

As she eats the cereal, and waits for her tea to cool down, Becky thinks. She knows what she’s dealing with now. If she looks at this from a totally cold, factual, place, she can list what she knows. Like Bella Swan in that stupid Twilight book (a total rip-off of Supernatural —)

One: She can’t escape her own house, because Chuck just brings her right back, and she can’t harm him. For a second, she lets her mind float back to what she realised when she stabbed him — that sickening, world-changing, unbelievable thing. That he’s God. She remembers looking at him on her computer screen, when he was still Carver Edlund to her, when he said that  _ it was all real. _ And she believed that in a split second. But she was young then, and very different. For some reason, she can’t get her head around what he said.  _ I’m God. _

She doesn’t  _ want _ to get her head around it. Who cares if he wants to call himself God, if he is  _ the _ God that she learnt about in Sunday school? It feels like she’s playing right into his sick ego trip, if she thinks too hard about what, or who, he is. She tried that. Fighting him, like Sam and Dean would fight a regular monster, didn’t work. It doesn’t matter what he is.

All she has to do is keep herself alive for long enough to maybe get out of here.

She doesn’t like the sound of that sentence, but it’s true.

Okay, what else does she know? Two: He wants her to be his editor, and he wants her to play along, like she  _ wants _ to be here. She remembers what he said to her, yesterday. (How was that only yesterday? It feels like a lifetime ago —)

_ Every good writer needs an editor. _

She hates to try to get inside his head, inside the head of the monster that stole her family, but she has to. For her own safety’s sake. So, he wants someone to read whatever ending he has planned for the Supernatural books, and he wants her to play house with him, right? Whatever ending he has planned for Sam and Dean, he wants her help to get there, and to act grateful for the opportunity.

“Come on, Becky,” she mutters to herself, looks down at the half-finished bowl of cereal. “You went to Theatre Camp. You can pretend.”

An image of the knife, hanging right in front of her eye, flashes across her mind. She pushes it away. If she thinks about it for too long, she’ll lose what little control she has.

Okay, so she has to just pretend for… who knows how long? She has to read what he’s writing, and be good and quiet, and maybe she’ll get her family back.

Or maybe he’ll kill her.

She holds her spoon a little tighter. “Alright, none of that,” she tells herself, sharply. It won’t help her to think like that. She has to be brave. For her kids.

If Chuck wants to play house with her, then she’ll just have to suck it up and do it.

Suddenly, she hears the sound of typing in the living room. Chuck must have finished exploring her home, because he’s back at the desk.

She looks up with a start, and grabs her un-drunk mug of tea, and decides to give this her best shot. It’s her only choice. Keep your enemies close, right? She stands up and checks her reflection in the side of the toaster, wiping her eyes one last time. Her face is still red, and she’s wearing the same clothes she was wearing yesterday, but she doubts he’ll care. Taking a deep breath, she carries the mug of tea into the living room.

He’s sitting at her desk again, typing quickly. And she realises that, even though he said he wanted an editor, so far, all he’s done is ask her for one synonym.  _ Maybe he doesn’t want an editor at all. Maybe he just wants — _

But, before she can finish the sentence, he looks up at her. “What?” he asks, tiredly.

“I… Uh… Made you some tea,” she says, and she holds it out awkwardly. “Y’know… to say sorry… for… um... For…” She can’t remember what she’s supposed to be sorry for, so she just trails off and stands there. Maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe he doesn’t want her to talk too much?

“Put it on the desk,” he says. She puts it down and takes a few steps back. What now? Does he want her to just stand there while he writes? Does he want her to sit on the couch? He’s not looked at her since she came in. He’s just staring at the computer screen.

“Um… How’s it going?” she asks.

“It goes.”

He still doesn’t look at her, so she takes a slow, nervous, step towards the couch. Chuck doesn’t react. She takes another step. And another. And, eventually, she reaches the couch and sinks down onto it, clutching her hands together tightly, to stop them trembling. And Chuck rests his fingertips on her keyboard — the keyboard she used to use to write her own fanfictions — and starts typing again.

He doesn’t touch the mug of tea she brought of him, or look away from the screen. He’s not smiling anymore. The air feels weird, tense. Becky stares at the spot where Rod disappeared in a puff of smoke, right in front of her eyes. She has the dumb urge to crouch there, to touch the carpet where her husband stood, but she doesn’t dare. She just stays on the couch, breathing steadily.

“Becky —” he says, suddenly. She jumps, and looks up.  _ Act natural, act natural. _

“Yes, Chuck?” Her voice is a little higher than normal, but she’s proud that it doesn’t shake.

“Did you ever read Milton?”

“I… Uh… Milton?”  _ Who the heck is that? _

Chuck sighs, and, staring at him from where she’s sitting on the couch, Becky can see his grey hair, shining silver in the sunlight, the crow’s feet around his eyes, the slight wrinkles on his skin. He looks so much older now, than he did ten years ago, when they dated. He glances up from the screen, but he doesn’t look at her. He stares into the distance.

“Did I request thee, Maker?” Chuck murmurs, almost to himself. “From my clay, to mould me man?” He’s staring at nothing, and Becky feels, weirdly, like he’s not even really talking to her. She doesn’t want to make him angry, so she doesn’t say anything. But he keeps talking anyway. “Did I solicit thee, from darkness to promote me?”

There’s a beat of silence, and Chuck finally turns to look at her. His eyes look totally hollow, like he’s staring right through her. She doesn’t really understand what he just said — something about clay? She’s still exhausted, and she didn’t have enough to eat, and she’s so on edge that she can’t think straight. Whatever he’s trying to say, she doesn’t understand it. So, she just blinks at him helplessly, and hopes that he doesn’t expect her to say anything.

“Yeah,” he says, softly. “I figured.”

She has no idea what he figured, but he seems satisfied, because he goes back to staring at the computer screen, and doesn’t say anything else.


	5. Chapter 5

It goes. Just like Chuck said, it goes.

It’s unbelievable how quickly Becky gets used to being a prisoner in her own home. The only places she goes are the kitchen, for food, the living room, to sleep, and her office, where she brings Chuck coffee. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t seem to sleep either. She doesn’t think he needs to drink coffee, but he does.

That’s what she does, more than anything else. Get him coffee. Occasionally, he asks her for a synonym, or reads an out-of-context sentence to her, and asks if it sounds good. It hardly counts as  _ editing, _ she thinks. She gave more detailed feedback to people betaing her fanfictions. But really, she’s not an editor — she’s more like a glorified waitress. It takes less acting skill than she thought it would, putting a mug onto the desk, giving him an alternative word, sitting very quietly.

She spends a lot of time watching him. Chuck. Her ex-boyfriend. God. She sits on the couch, and he doesn’t seem to mind, except when he wants her for something, then he just teleports her from there to his desk. And, from there, she can watch him easily, without him noticing. Or, if he notices, he doesn’t say anything. He really  _ doesn’t _ say anything. After their talk a few days ago, about Milton, the most Chuck has said to her has been to ask for editing pointers, and to tell her she can go have something to eat, or to get him coffee. It’s not a terrifying silence, really. It’s not like he’s quietly simmering. He’s just  _ blank. _ Like he’s not really there.

Becky notices a lot, while she watches him. His hair is definitely greyer now, and he squints a lot. His teeth are straighter and whiter than when they dated, which is weird. He talks to himself too, but quietly. It sounds like a foreign language, like something very old and alien. She’s too nervous to ask what he’s saying, or to talk to him at all. Even though she’s  _ so _ bored, this quiet nothingness is better than the guy he was before, the furious monster who threatened to blind her. Maybe, if she just waits this out, he’ll get to the end of this new Supernatural story, and leave. Maybe he’ll bring her family back.

Deep down, she knows she’s deluding herself, but she has to, or she’ll just start screaming and never stop.

It’s been three days. Her back hurts from sleeping on the couch, and her mind feels like cotton wool from lack of stimulation. At some point, she realises that she hasn’t seen her phone since all of this started. She hasn’t tried to run since that first time. She hasn’t tried to attack Chuck again. When she thinks about doing it, even for a second, she remembers staring at the sharp point of the knife, floating in front of her eye. She remembers watching Rod disappearing in a cloud of smoke. And she goes back to drawing.

That’s one thing that’s changed. Chuck lets her draw, and write. He didn’t say anything — one day, there was just a pile of paper on the coffee table, and a pencil.

“Thanks,” Becky whispered, afraid to speak louder.

Chuck grunted, and that was it.

That was the day after he asked her about Milton, the day after he hung the knife in front of her eye, the day after she sobbed in the kitchen and told herself she had to act natural, to get through this.

That was three whole days ago.

On the fourth day, while she’s drawing a picture of Bryan, he finally speaks. It’s about lunchtime, and she hasn’t spoken a word for three days.

“How are you doing?”

She jumps, and draws a thick, black, line across the picture, so Bryan has been crossed out. She looks up at him.  _ What? _

Chuck is staring at her from the desk. He’s wearing his glasses, but there’s something different about them. It takes Becky a second to realise that there’s no white squares reflecting off the lenses — he’s turned the computer off. For the first time in almost a week, Chuck has turned off the computer. She has no idea if that’s a good thing or not.

“I —” Her voice is croaky from not talking, and, before she says anything else, a glass of water appears out of nowhere, on the coffee table. Becky stares at it.

“You can drink it,” Chuck says, with a small smile. “It won’t kill you. It’s just water.” There’s a pause. “Go ahead, seriously.”

She reaches out and holds the glass. It’s one of theirs, from the kitchen. She picks up, her hand shaking a little, and takes a sip. It’s just water. The edge of the glass clinks against her teeth, but the water is so refreshing, and she literally feels her throat hydrate with every sip.

When it’s all gone, she puts the glass down, and looks back at Chuck, who’s been watching her this whole time. He’s smiling. It’s not a nice smile, but she feels, weirdly, like it’s supposed to be.

“How’re you doing?” he asks again.

“I’m… fine.” She presses her hands together, digging her fingertips into her palms. She’s become so aware of her body, over the past few days, so aware of her own limitations. She stabbed him and he didn’t even react. But she’s so fragile. And she feels it every single second. Because looking at him feels too risky, she looks down at her hands.

“Yeah?” he asks, still smiling patiently. “You can talk to me, you know. It’s not like you have anyone else to talk to.” He pauses. “And how many people wanna have a chat with  _ God, _ huh? I mean, Ezekiel eat your heart out, right?”

Becky has a feeling that he wants her to admit to  _ something, _ so she says, “I guess I’m a little tired.” She keeps looking at her hands, her shoulders hunched over.

“Right,” he says. “The couch isn’t comfy?”

It sounds like a real question, like he wants to know, and it sounds so much like he  _ cares _ that it almost hurts her. She wants to shout at him.  _ Of course the freaking couch isn’t comfy! I miss my bed, I miss my husband! I miss reading to my kids before they go to sleep! _ But she thinks about the knife, floating by itself, right in front of her eye, and she doesn’t say any of that. Instead, she just shakes her head. “Not really.” Her chest aches with nerves. This is more talking than she’s done in days, and she doesn’t like it. It’s too easy to slip up.

There’s a  _ click _ as he snaps his fingers, and Becky doesn’t even have time to flinch before a bed appears, in the corner of the room, tucked between the wall, and the table where her maquettes sit. She stares at it. Just like the glass of water, there was nothing, and now there’s a bed. She’s getting used to it.

“... Thank you,” she says, quietly. It’s their spare bed, the single, the one they use for guests. He must have moved it from upstairs.

“You’re welcome,” he replies, pleasantly. “D’you want anything else?”

She manages to tear her gaze away from the bed, and looks at him. He’s watching her carefully, his head bent forward a little, like he’s trying to meet her gaze. His eyes are wide, and so blue. And again, he looks almost like the guy she used to date, the first guy she  _ ever _ dated. There’s no hint of the evil side of him. She wishes he’d stop looking at her like that, because it’s so confusing.

“Becky?” he asks, gently.

“No,” she says. “No, I — I don’t want anything else. Thank you.” She swallows, and her spit sticks in her throat. It’s a lie, it’s  _ such _ a lie. But he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s still smiling that weird, nasty, smile.

“I want us to get along, kiddo,” Chuck says. “So… if you want anything, just let me know, okay?”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t do anything, but the laptop turns on by itself, and he turns back to the screen. He doesn’t type again. He just looks at it. And maybe it’s because of the little crease between his eyebrows, that makes him look like his old self, or because he gave her a bed, or because she’s so starved of conversation, but Becky dares to ask him a question.

“Chuck?” she says, her voice a little higher than usual.

“Mmm?” He doesn’t look away from the screen.

“Why — Why haven’t you asked me to edit much?”

He blinks, and peers at her again. For a second, she thinks she’s asked the wrong question, that he’s going to punish her, and she shrinks a little, but he just looks thoughtful, like he’s actually considering it.

“I guess I don’t need you to,” he says, with a one-shouldered shrug. He reaches up and takes off his glasses, and taps them on his bottom lip, looking at the screen. “It’s just… flowing. But trust me —” He looks at her again, and flashes her that same smile. “— If I need you, I’ll let you know, okay?”

“Okay.”

And he nods once, and it feels like the end of the conversation. He goes back to staring at the screen, and she slowly picks up her pencil, turns over the sheet of paper, and goes back to drawing. But the silence feels different this time. Maybe it’s just in her head, but it feels more companionable than before.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's sticking with this story, commenting, and leaving Kudos! It means so much to me.

Even though Chuck gave her a bed, Becky can’t sleep. It’s almost 3 in the morning, and she’s on her side with the duvet pulled right up to her chin. She feels, weirdly, more uncomfortable in bed. She can’t see him in the office, but she knows he’s still sitting in front of the laptop. She stares at the couch in the dark — a shape she can’t quite make out. He’s not typing. He’s just sitting there in silence.

“Becky?”

His voice makes her jump, and her heart races. “... Yeah?”

“Oh good. You’re not asleep.”

She bites her lip to stop herself from saying _ obviously_. “No. I can’t really sleep.”

He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, but there’s the sound of the chair being pushed back, and he walks into the living room. It’s crazy, how terrifying he is. He’s barely 5ft, still wearing that ugly brown cardigan he was wearing when he arrived outside her house. He looks like just some middle-aged guy. _ Ordinary_, is how Becky would describe him, if she was writing about him in a fanfic. Totally ordinary, kind of handsome, though she hates to admit that. 

The sight of him standing there, in the moonlight, makes her stomach churn.

He walks over to the couch and sits down, like he owns it, and it doesn’t even make her angry. She’s just exhausted. Her house isn’t hers, her _ life _ isn’t hers, anymore. He takes off his glasses and puts them on the coffee table. She just stays as still as she can, waiting, her heart thudding. But he doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, resting his elbows on his knees, staring at the wall behind her. It’s creepy.

“How… uh…” she begins, awkwardly. “How’s the writing going?”

It’s the first thing she can think to say, because she has to say something. He’s just sitting there, almost like he’s forgotten she’s there, and she has to do something.

Chuck blinks, and looks at her. “Huh?” he asks, stupidly. “Oh. I dunno. I thought it was flowing. It _ was _ flowing.” He pauses. “Endings are hard.”

She feels ridiculous, lying on her side while he’s sitting right there, so she moves to sit up, propping herself up with her arm, and crosses her legs, still wrapping the duvet around herself. “Yeah?” she asks. “I know the feeling. I always struggle to end my fanfictions.” She smiles a little. This is good, right? Making a connection? Maybe, if she can make him see her as a _ person_, he’ll feel sorry for her, and let her go. It’s pathetic, but it’s worth a shot. She remembers what he said, what feels like a lifetime ago. _ I kinda hate me right now_.

He scoffs to himself. “Yeah,” he says. “’Cause ending Sam and Dean’s story is _ exactly _ like that.”

She wants to snap, to say that fanfiction is just as important, but she knows she can’t. So, instead, she doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. “... What’re you struggling with?”

Then, Chuck does something weird. He runs a hand through his greying hair, making it stick up on end, like he used to when she thought he was just a prophet, when they dated. It’s so weirdly humanising, and she doesn’t know what to do. Maybe it’s just because it’s night, and he’s half-hidden in darkness, but he seems so vulnerable right now. Nothing like the monster who stole her family, who calmly wrenched her from the street and back inside her own house, who threatened to blind her. Becky knows it’s crazy — he’s still the guy who did all those things — but he seems so different right now.

“A lot,” he says, bluntly.

She knows she’s treading on dangerous ground here. He could still snap. He could do _ anything_. So, she wants to let him steer the conversation. She swallows. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asks.

He looks at her, and, in the dark, he looks so human, so _ real_, that it’s still impossible to wrap her head around what she knows he is. God. _ The _ God. But there’s an expression in his dark blue eyes that she can barely make out in the gloom — the lines on his face look deeper, the crow’s feet on the edges of his eyes look clearer. He looks older.

“Seem I to thee sufficiently possessed of happiness, or not?” he asks in a flat voice, and he sounds so weird and hollow that Becky’s mouth falls open. But Chuck continues, in that same empty tone. “Who am alone, from all eternity. For none I know second to me, or like, equal much less.”

His voice sounds the same as it did when he quoted that guy Milton a few days ago, and she wonders if this is from that same guy. He’s obviously quoting something. But he doesn’t seem to want her to say anything. He just sits there, with his shoulders hunched, and his hands hanging limply.

She has a strange feeling that, if she were to get up and try to run right now, he might not stop her. But it’s still a risk she can’t take. And he looks so painfully vulnerable, so tired, so alone, that she feels _ sorry _ for him. It’s insane, and stupid, and she knows it, but empathy tugs at her lungs with a startling pain.

She realises her mouth is still open, and she closes it with a snap, her teeth clicking together.

“There’s nothing you can do,” he says, bluntly. He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds… _ sad _ ? _ What? _

“Are you sure?” she asks, in a whisper. It feels like they’re not talking about the ending to the Supernatural book anymore. It feels like they’re talking about something else, but she doesn’t understand what it is. There’s just something in his eyes, even in the dim light. Something in the way he’s sitting, hunched over like an old man. It’s unnerving.

“Yeah,” he says, and he smiles wearily, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s enough that you’re here.”

That makes her angry. She doesn’t _ want _ to be here. She wants her life back. She wants her husband back. She draws the duvet around herself tighter, and makes herself as small as possible, to try to remind herself that she can’t lose her cool again. He might kill her. He might really, honestly, murder her. He already said he doesn’t need her to edit his story. She can’t get angry.

“... Chuck?” she says quietly.

“Yeah?”

And, because she can’t get angry, she says, very carefully, “What are you going to do?”

It sounds like a stupid question, like the kind of thing she’d have written in a fanfiction, the sort of question the damsel in distress asks the villain right before Sam and Dean show up and save the day, but she has to know. She thinks of the knife, hanging by itself in the air, pointed right at her eye. And she doesn’t just want to know what he’s going to do to her. She remembers the ending she read, the ending he has planned for Sam and Dean. And she thinks, painfully, about her children, about Rod vanishing in a puff of smoke right in front of her. This isn’t just about what he’s going to do to _ her_. This feels bigger than that.

He sighs, and raises his hand to press his fingers against his eyes. It’s a gesture that Rod used to do when he was frustrated, such a human gesture of weariness and annoyance. But there’s something else in it too. And Becky can hardly believe it, but suddenly, she knows it’s true. _ He doesn’t know. _ He kept her here for… some reason. He wants to get to the ending he’s already written. But he doesn’t _ really _ know what he’s doing. It’s all, suddenly, so glaringly obvious that she wants to laugh. She clenches her jaw and doesn’t dare make a sound.

She might be wrong. He might have a meticulous plan that she’s not aware of, some grand evil scheme that ends with her dead, a cog in his machine. He’s _ God _ after all. What the heck does she know?

But he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything, and she has no idea if that means he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, or if he wants her to _ think _ he doesn’t know, or he just doesn’t want to share it.

He stands up, and the suddenness of the movement makes her flinch a little, automatically. Chuck laughs to himself, and she realises that he was there all along, the same guy who threatened to take her eye with a floating knife, the guy who calmly drank from her son’s mug while he told her she couldn’t escape. He was right there, just underneath the surface. The guy who can laugh at her discomfort, her fear.

“Go to sleep,” he says, simply, and he walks out of the room, and out of sight.

She stays there for a few seconds, sitting on the bed, and slowly sinks down again, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling. She hears him pulling the chair out, and the creak as he sits down. He doesn’t type, or do anything. There’s just a silence, punctuated by the ticking clock on the mantelpiece. Becky closes her eyes, and tugs the duvet around herself tightly, feeling like a little kid, trying to protect herself from the monster she knows is out there.

She can’t remember Chuck’s exact words, and she might not have been very smart, but she understood what he’d said, when he’d spoken in that totally empty voice. _ Who am alone, from all eternity_. And she wonders, again, if he knows what he’s going to do. If he even knows what he’s doing right now.

She feels weird, and she knows she shouldn’t be thinking about his feelings at all. He’s not thinking about her feelings. He could kill her with a snap of his fingers. He probably will, when he gets bored of whatever the heck he’s doing with her. He might kill Rod and the kids. He might have _ already _ killed Rod and the kids. He might have lied about them not being dead, to keep her in line.

But she still feels weird, because she never thought of God as lonely before.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch now, everyone! Thanks so much to those of you who've stuck with this story. It means the world! I hope I can conclude it in a satisfying way for you all.

The phone rings.

It’s been seven days since Chuck snapped away her family and kept her hostage in her own house, and, for the first time, the phone rings.

Rod was always saying they should get rid of the landline — the only people who called them on it were his mother, and salespeople. But Becky liked it. It was old-fashioned, she said.

Now, it’s ringing into the silence, shrill and alien, and Becky just stares at it from the couch. It’s sitting there, on the table by the wall. She wants to run over to it, to beg whoever it is to rescue her, even if it’s someone trying to sell her cheap car insurance. Whoever it is, she wants to tell them what’s happening, that she’s being held prisoner by God, who’s gone crazy — or maybe he was always crazy —

“Don’t answer it.”

Chuck sounds weary, but firm. Becky flinches, and turns to blink at him. She opens her mouth. They’ve been getting along, haven’t they? He said he was lonely. He gave her a bed. They’ve been getting along. But she thinks of the way he smiled at her discomfort, and the knife, hanging in the air, and the way he drank from her husband’s mug. She closes her mouth.

The phone stops ringing, and there’s a piercing, loud, silence.

“You can’t keep me here forever, you know,” she says, quietly. She doesn’t know where the words come from, they just come out. And, immediately, she wishes she could take them back, because Chuck looks at her through his glasses, and she can’t see his eyes, because of the white glare from her laptop’s screen. She feels like the past few days, where they were getting along, haven’t happened. She feels very small again.

“I already told you, Becky,” he says. “I can do anything.” There’s a pause, and then he says, “But I don’t want to keep you here forever.”

This is such a surprise that she just stares at him again. “W-what?” she stutters, eventually.

He sighs, and presses his forefinger and thumb against his eyebrows, over the top of his glasses. It’s such a human gesture that, for the hundredth time, she can’t believe he’s  _ God. _ He looks like a tired old man, like an older, more worn out, version of the guy she dated ten years ago. “I don’t wanna keep you here forever,” he repeats.

“Then… what  _ do _ you want?” she asks.

He’s driving all of this. If he’d just let her go, if he’d just give her her husband and kids back. She can’t remember the last thing she said to Junior the morning of their fishing trip. She can’t remember when she last told Bryan that she loves him. Every time she tries to think about Rod, all she sees is his dumb, confused, smile, as he vanishes in a puff of smoke.  _ Babe? _ And then he’s gone. Becky’s spent seven days with Chuck, now.

“What do I want?” Chuck repeats.

“Yes!” Suddenly, she’s so sick of this ‘tired old man’ act. This weird, exhausted, routine he’s been putting on since he gave her a bed in her own living room. If he’s having some kind of breakdown, then fine. Can’t he do it someplace else? Why does he have to take it out on her, on her family, her kids? “What do you  _ want, _ Chuck?” she shouts, getting to her feet. “What do you want with me? Because you sure don’t want me to edit your stupid story! You don’t want my help! I only read the ending! You  _ said _ you don’t want me to edit! So why are you keeping me around, huh?” She feels crazy, reckless. She remembers the knife, but she doesn’t care.

He lowers his hand slowly, and blinks at her. “I don’t want the story to end.”

The answer isn’t what she expects.

“What?” She stares at him.

“You heard me.” Chuck takes off his glasses, and she can see his dark blue eyes clearly. “I don’t want the story to end.”

“You mean… you mean Sam and Dean’s story?”

Just like before, when he talked about being lonely, Becky feels like she’s broken through some wall, like she’s really  _ seeing _ Chuck. Not the creepy, empty, smiling guy who threatened to blind her. Not even the tired old guy. Some other version of him. Like there weren’t enough versions already. The shy prophet she knew, the awkward ex who spent all day in her house while her husband was out, the cold-eyed monster who snapped his fingers and stole her family from her. Were they all him? 

He doesn’t answer her. Instead, he says, “Why d’you write fanfiction?”

It’s such a random question that she doesn’t know what to say. But she feels like she has to keep him talking, or he’ll lose interest and fall back to wherever he goes when he’s endlessly writing, not looking at her, not moving for hours. So, she says, “Uh — I don’t know — Because I love the characters?  _ Your _ characters. I want to spend more time with them.”

“Exactly.”

Becky doesn’t get it. She sinks slowly back onto the couch, and stares at him. But he seems to expect her to not understand, because he keeps talking.

“You’re all characters. All of you. And… if I go to face Sam and Dean…. The story will be over.”

She doesn’t ask what he means by  _ facing _ Sam and Dean. She doesn’t care. She feels like she’s onto something here, really onto something. If she can just get him to keep talking, maybe she can get him to let her go.

“But you can’t just keep me here, Chuck — You can’t stay here! I have a life.”

He scoffs, and she thinks that was the wrong thing to say, so she keeps going. “And… and some things have to end. Even if we don’t want them to. I used to want your books to keep going. I wanted you to keep publishing forever.” She leans forwards, staring at him. He’s staring back at her with clear eyes, like he’s seeing her too. “But then I grew up and got married and had kids. And I still love Supernatural. Of course I do! But I realised what you’d given me, by stopping publishing. You’d given me space! To write what  _ I _ wanted, outside the books! I could make everything up. The boys didn’t have to hunt, or save the world. Your stories were amazing. I’ll always love them. But fans need space.  _ I _ needed space. And now the story wasn’t just yours. It was  _ ours. _ Yours and mine. And theirs too.”

She knows she’s said a lot, but she can’t stop — words are pouring out of her. And he doesn’t interrupt, or make a sound. “Some things have to end! Supernatural and… and childhood and our favourite TV shows, and a piece of candy, and a good book!” She knows she’s talking to an immortal being, but that’s why she has to explain, because maybe he doesn’t understand what endings  _ are. _ “Things have to end, otherwise they don’t mean anything!”

She almost asks if he gets it, but she doesn’t want to insult him any more than she probably has, so she doesn’t. Instead, she says, “This has to end, Chuck! I want my family back. I want my kids back —” She cuts herself off, because, if she talks to him about her children, she knows she’ll start crying.

It’s more than she said in days. Her throat aches and, before she can say anything, a glass of water appears on the coffee table. She says, “Thank you,” softly, and picks it up. She gulps it down quietly, and puts it back on the table. She feels out of breath, and her heart is racing.

Chuck chews the inside of his cheek. He looks at the computer screen, squinting a little. He does that a lot, she’s noticed. And then he looks back at her. There’s something in his eyes that reminds him that he really  _ is _ God, because he looks so old and tired, but so alive, and so pained, and so lonely. So many things all at once that she wants to fall to her knees.

“Things have to end,” he repeats, quietly, to himself. And then he blinks. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

Becky knows that’s all she’s going to get. She expected him to leave. At least… she  _ hoped _ he’d leave. This feels like the  _ end _ , like he’s going to give her her life back. She gave him a speech and he looked like he understood, like he really heard her. This has to be it. What else can she do, if she can’t talk him out of letting her go? This has the same tense feeling she gets when she’s watching the finale to a TV show, or reading the last chapter of a book. Like it’s all going to be over. And she’ll be able to hold her husband and her kids. She can already feel Rod’s arms around her, hear Bryan’s happy laughter, feel Junior’s excited hands clamouring for a hug. Her  _ family, _ with her again.

But she knows that she has to be content with him thinking about it, so she nods silently, and leans back onto the couch.

Chuck pushes his chair out from under the desk, stands up, and walks out of the room. She hears him walk into the kitchen, but she doesn’t get up.

_ He’s thinking about it, _ she tells herself. That’s something.


	8. Chapter 8

_ Things have to end_, Chuck had said. And this is how it ends.

Becky wakes up, and she knows he’s gone as soon as she opens her eyes. The air’s not as tense, and there’s no typing, no sound of him drinking coffee. The living room feels empty, and Becky sits up so fast that she feels dizzy. Her hair is greasy and tangled from days of not being washed, and her teeth feel slimy with plaque, and her skin feels oily, like when she was a teenager. That’s what Chuck did. He made her regress into who she was when they were together, but a much, much, worse version.

She stares at her desk. He’s not there.

“Chuck?” she calls, hoarsely. There’s no answer.

She swings her legs off the bed, and her thighs feel achy and weak, like she hasn’t stood up for a long time. She can’t stop shaking. _ Is he really gone? Why? Why would he just leave? He hasn’t finished the book_.

But she feels, for the first time in days, like he’s not watching her. There’s not the oppressive weight in the air anymore — the weight she got so used to that she stopped noticing it, like a ticking clock.

Slowly, shakily, she walks over to the kitchen door, and peers inside. He’s not there either, and the breakfast things aren’t set out, like they usually are. But she sees a note on the table, handwritten in a scrawl that she recognises as Chuck’s. Even after years, she knows his handwriting, and it makes a part of her old, buried, self, pine. Even after everything he’s done, and what she knows about him, and what he’s threatened her with, there’s still his number one fan, deep inside her.

Becky walks over to the table, and looks down at the note without picking it up.

_ Check the monitor_.

The monitor? Her computer? What? Why? She’s barely been awake for two minutes, and already, her mind is whirring with confusion. She turns around and walks as quickly as she can over to the computer, the computer where he held her hostage for hours, forcing her to stand. The computer where he sat for days, never sleeping and barely getting up.

She doesn’t know what she expects to see. A finished draft of the final book? A title page? _ All work and no play makes Chuck a dull boy_?

But that’s not what it says. She stares at the document.

_ Dear Becky_.

Her legs are hurting so much that she dares to pull the chair out, and drops into it like a stone. He’s not here. He won’t threaten her, or yell at her, or harm her, anymore. Because he’s not here.

So, she reads.

> _ Dear Becky, _
> 
> _ I’ve been thinking about what you said, about how fans need room to write what they want. _
> 
> _ I wanted to end Sam and Dean’s story for reasons that are way too complicated to explain. I wanted to end all of it. I considered this world a failure. A total failure. You all kill each other and destroy nature and hurt each other. This isn’t what I wanted, when I made you. I don’t know what I wanted. But it wasn’t this. _
> 
> _ And then Sam and Dean screwed up in a really big way, and I figured that was time to end it. Not just their story, but all of them. It was time to end this world. _
> 
> _ Like you said, everything has to end, right? _
> 
> _ But you said something about the Supernatural books. How they weren’t just mine anymore, they were yours — all of the fans. And how I needed to give you all space to write what you want, so Sam and Dean didn’t need to hunt monsters, or fight demons, or whatever. They could do what you all wanted them to do, because they’re yours now, as much as mine. _
> 
> _ I can’t believe I’m going to type this, but here goes. _
> 
> _ Is it my right to end this world? _
> 
> _ Dean asked me that once, sort of. He said that I started all this, but that I didn’t have the right to end it. I didn’t really get it, at the time. Of course I had a right to end it? You’re all mine. _
> 
> _ But maybe you’re right, Becky. Maybe you’re not all mine. Maybe you’re yours. Maybe Sam and Dean’s story isn’t my story anymore. Maybe it’s theirs. _
> 
> _ I asked if you’d read Milton. That guy really hit the nail on the head. “Did I request thee, Maker? From my clay, to mould me man?” Remember, I said that? In the poem, that’s Adam, talking to Milton’s version of me. And he’s asking me if he asked me to make him. _
> 
> _ The answer is no. You all didn’t ask to be made. You just found yourselves here, in a world I made, with all its flaws and natural disasters and beauty. And you all made it your own. And you wouldn’t want it all to end. You said yourself that everything’s gotta end, sometime, and you’re right. But not my last great masterpiece. Not yet. I’ll let it keep ticking over for now. _
> 
> _ I deleted the ending I wrote, for Sam and Dean. The ending you hated is gone now. I’m going to let it play out how they want it to. I guess you could call it a cliffhanger. Maybe their story will end the way I wrote, or maybe they’ll grow old and die in their sleep, or maybe they’ll die fighting some monster. I don’t know. And that’s kind of exciting, not knowing. _
> 
> _ Anyway, like I said before, nothing ever really ends, does it? Even when the real Sam and Dean retire, or die, or whatever, they'll never really be gone. They'll belong to their readers._
> 
> _ I think you’re right. I think stories belong to their readers, not their authors, and lives belong to the creations, not their creator. _
> 
> _ Maybe this is all just a mid-eternity crisis, anyway. Maybe I’ll change my mind tomorrow, or next year. Who knows? But right now, this is where I’m at. _
> 
> _ I’m writing this at 6am, and you’re asleep in bed. I’m going to go soon, but I just want to stay a little longer. We had a good time together, didn’t we? Okay, maybe not this time, but before, when you were still a kid, and I was just the Prophet Chuck, and we hung out. _
> 
> _ The sun’s rising now. The sky’s brightening up. This world is so beautiful. _
> 
> _ I hope you can be happy, Becky. You might not belong to me — you might never have belonged to me — but I want you to be happy anyway. _
> 
> _ Endings are hard, so I’m just going to end this. _
> 
> _— Chuck Shurley_
> 
> _ P.S. I took something from you, and I’m going to give it back. Because lives might belong to their creations, but families belong together._

She doesn’t know when her eyes went teary, but she blinks, and feels the tears drip down her face.

She remembers the way Chuck stared into the distance like he wasn’t really here, and when he asked if he seemed happy, and when he said he didn’t know what he was going to do. He seemed so lost, and angry, and hurt, and confused.

_Families belong together_. She knows he means by that, and when she hears Junior and Bryan behind her, by the front door, call out, “Mommy!” she realises that Chuck’s given her her family back. And then she hears Rod call “Baby?”, and she turns around and staggers away from the computer, away from the desk where God Himself had been sitting for the past few days, to see her husband and her sons.

She doesn’t know where Chuck’s gone, or what he’s gonna do next, but at least he’s given her her family back.

That’s what Supernatural was always about, right? Family. And forgiveness.

And, as she half-runs, half-falls, out of the living room to see Rod and the kids standing there, blinking at her, Becky decides that she forgives Chuck for what he did to her. She starts sobbing, and pulls her little family into a hug.

Yeah, she forgives Chuck.

He just didn’t want the story to end, and who can blame him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for letting me take you on this weird journey! When I started this fanfiction, I had no idea what was going to happen, or what it was about, besides "What if Becky didn't die?" But it ended up having themes about the death of the author, and fanfiction itself, and an author's right to their own story, and endings, and the point of fanfiction in the first place.
> 
> Since I started writing this fanfiction last year, the world has completely changed, and Supernatural took their hiatus, and a lot has happened in my personal life, but it's been so great to know that so many people have enjoyed reading this story. I've thoroughly enjoyed writing it, and letting Chuck and Becky take me on this journey.
> 
> However they choose to end Chuck's story in the show, we'll always have fanfiction.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your comments, kudos, and time.


End file.
